This is a substory about Melinda, a human girl in servitude to monstergirl Empire in this metaplot story:
Theo: The Blood Angel of Lescatie
.
Her story starts at page 5. This is her own story, please enjoy and give feedback.
**
Inquisition Interview Serial No: E6-Y-17T
Post-screeningTags: Bondage and mildly sexually suggestive content.
Subject: Female, healer cleric.
Physical Profile: Age 23. Slightly voluptuous with large breasts, dusky brown skin with black eyes, features of the southeastern continent of Qadim. Muscle development toned, given the military calisthenics even for clerics being mandatory. Contamination suspected, as her gaze and demeanor shows a slight agitation regarding matters of mamono beyond mere trauma.
Name and past: Miriam bint Al-Fulani, Qadimi immigrant's daughter enrolled into the Lescatian priesthood, re-baptized as Melinda. Lost, presumed captured and enslaved in skirmish, ransomed back after an incident involving a murder and an encounter the rogue terrorist "Theo", 500 gold pieces of ransom paid by the state to her minotaur owner.
Psych Profile: Subject is in deep depression and kept calm by spells and medication. Interview taken during a calm time, with potions laced with truth serum.
Q: Thank you for agreeing to talk with us. I hope we can heal you eventually of your mental ordeals.
A: (nods wearily)
Q:Would you tell us about yourself?
A: I joined the Healing Sisterhood of Hypatia when me and my family came from Magreb as a refugee. Since brown people are a curiosity in your lands, I was taken in to healer sisterhood to get free room, board and even a decent allowance. I sent it to father. He was...happy I contributed.
Q:So your area of expertise is...?
A: I can heal deep wounds once per day, help women deliver babies and prepare plant extracts for healing. Mostly a medical lay sister, a midwife and healer.
Q:What caused you to sign up for the war? You must have been aware that losers likely get accounted as "lost" in mamono lands and maybe never can see their home again.
A: I was...(swallows) disowned. Father didn't want to see me after I was mingling with men and boys. Our culture...
Q:We did not have much information towards Qadimi religion and culture until now. Can you give us a few tidbits?
A:Our women follow a law called "purdah". You have to cover parts of your body the higher you are in social status. Slave women and prostitutes could wear far less, and family women wearing "abaya", clothes that leave only hands and face outside, with noblewomen and queens in a complete tent-like "burqa", meaning only their husbands can see their bodies and faces. We had a...what you call, a culture shock. But father let me join the Sisterhood on the condition I maintain my abaya-dress level purdah. Our culture encourages having women learn in schools, especially for healing other women.
Q:What happened?
A:...
Q:Please. What you tell will contribute greatly to our research about monstergirls and their interaction with human women. This is serious research, not harassment. Believe us.
A:Fine. I hated the abaya. Why not shirt,skirt and trousers? So when I was at the boarding school, I discarded the abaya in my cupboard and lived like the other girls, dresses skirts and blouses, shirts... I was free! Well...until father learned that I drank forbidden beer, ate a little bacon and even met the boys...Lescatian boys are fair-skinned, gentler and far more handsome than all the men I saw...*sighs* . Not aggressive, and they liked a dusky maiden from unknown lands talking to them. They said they loved my exotic accent.
Q:How did he learn about classified students? You are supposed to be sheltered from outside world during clerical training.
A:He paid people to peek and spy. (angrily grits her teeth) Looks like your janitors aren't that loyal once given a handful of silver...MY SILVER I sent to him...*sobs*
Q:And have you...? Had any relationships?
A: What does this have to do with the interview? (Agitated clearly)
Q:A lot. Pre-marital sexual activity and its results are reported to change mamono attitudes to human women they meet. They CAN sense others' sweat on people. Now please...
A:(Calm) No. But I have...well, spent time with them without daring to go further. Then came the war effort and we were drafted into medical roles anyway. And...
Q:Yes, What happened?
A:We were relieving a town under siege until cavalry routed them. I was tending the injured. Since everyone is using blunt weapons, it was bandage, plaster and tie up, letting ingested potions and wrapped poultices heal the flesh. I was resting a bit until some of the battle nuns who prayed and fought ran panicked to the camp and started screaming to retreat. One was downed with a bola on her ankles, with all the strange monster women charging, shouting and celebrating and pushing down any resisters. I was frozen from fear.
Q:How did they treat the wounded and the defenseless?
A:(Makes a gesture of tilting her open palms) Eh... They don't kill but we were surrounded, and my hands were pulled behind my back and tightly bound. They forced us quickly to sit and form a circle as the wounded were bandaged and tied as well.
Q:What did she say? (offers memory potion)
A: Hmm...(drinks and concentrates, repeats unnaturally accurately, in her voice) "Alright human girls, listen up. You are now prisoners of the mamono. Meaning you will be distributed to the winners, our citizens who need humie domestic labor." Now that brought a wail of sorrow and protest, which the monstergirls quickly beat into silence with sticks. Well...(sighs) She went on. (switches to the mamono voice) "Now now, it's not that bad once you humans get used to. Cooperate, and you might go back after some wimpy human delegate buys you out. Until then..." She then pushed down one of the male knights, and locked him with a savage kiss, slapping him when he protested, and said: "...we get to enjoy each other a little, and make some pretty coin of your cute butts."
Q: And the prisoners melted into compliance? Just like that? (aghast)
A: Not at first. But as time went on and we were pushed to our feet and were being marched, the monstergirls knew how to manipulate the runt of the litter to their side.
Q:How so?
A:Offers. rewards. Incentives and "friendship." In full view of the camp, we are made to sit on a circle and eat nothing but stale bread and water...except, they'd occasionally wave some wine and cake and luxuries under our noses. And they'd propose...
Q:Propose?
A:*sighs* "You look famished, fufufu~" Then you'd be offered a bite of luxury for a smile, a kiss or downright skinship contact. And the ones that weren't defiant get rewarded with lying closer to the fire and...massaged of their soreness...(drifts off)
Her memories drifted off to these days...
**
The human girls sullenly followed the caravan under guard, their hands tied to wagons or each other. They were fed and watered regularly, and nothing beyond a bit of harassment went on, unlike the horror stories of how monsters would murder, sacrifice or torture prisoners.
Still some girls stuck together or sobbed, making some of their monstergirl captives roll their eyes and sigh in annoyance. The loudest ones were eventually pulled aside, gagged with a cloth and tied up tighter before being given a slap on their rumps to follow the prisoner trail, monstergirl soldiers laughing all the way.
Some of these were re-loosened in their binds later when they made puppy eyes and wept of rope welts.
Melinda was lost in thoughts.
What would happen to her? Execution? Torture? Would these cute girls cook and eat her? They looked amiable though...
She was walking with a prisoner wagon, sullen, tearful and worried, walking blindly forward until she felt a pinch on her cheek and instinctively flinched.
"Psst. Brown cutie."
It was an idle smile of a sleepy monstergirl with horns leaning from a horse cart. She grinned at her, smelling mildly of beer and wearing a dopey smile. Her still feminine body was like a brickhouse, but she had an angular, lovely human-ish face, topped by horns and flappy bull ears.
A minotaur.
Minotaurs were quite unlike the legends, instead of a bull-headed monstrosity, she was a muscular, but still curvy girl with bull legs and horns.
Melinda thought that her face was quite cute too.
"You look famished. Want one?" She dangled a beer bottle in front of the thirsty girl. "Got rootbeer too, if you one of them...*burp* southerns...only bacon sandwich though." She lazily lay in her transport wagon with other monstergirls who mostly slept.
Licking her lips, Melinda considered her options. Reluctantly, she nodded. The minotaur's smirk and laughter mocked her reluctance in a way that tickled her insides.
"Alright... why don't you climb on my lap first? Looks like they don't even bind you anymore. Gained our trust?" She looked at the human's brown skin with interest. Melinda replied coolly, her brown eyes boring into the minotaur's own, dull pair:
"I'm a healer. I don't make racial distinction when helping the wounded so they trust me." Melinda made no effort to climb up to the cart, intent on bantering first.
"Ohhh?" The minotaur girl grinned. "Nice. How where were we? Hungry? Thirsty?" The human girl nodded, making the minotaur female grin and pat her lap. "Why don't you get up here and we work something out? Looks like some of your "sisters" did already..."
When Melinda looked around, she realized that some of the human girls and women were on horses or wagons, enduring (a relative term, some enjoyed it) a bit of skinship in return for good treatment. Her eyes grew *wide* when she noticed one of her sisters-in-arms, a brunette human girl by the name of Talia shyly talking with a young lizardgirl sitting on a wagon. She could hear their hushed argument:
"How can you know it's forbidden if you never tried it?" The green-scaled girl grinned, her armor an unbuckled heap next to her. She wore only a tank-top and shorts, and her eyes shone with an eager glint, her green scales making her look like a dragon when sitting. The human girl, Talia's hesitation was visible, who was a prisoner, hands still loosely bound before her, looking at the lizard-girl snuggling with her.
